A WSUS 3.0 SP2 Installation on a site I inherited has a huge database by now.
This site used to have several generations/variations of client/server Windows installations, and several thousands of approved updates for the <80 machines. Now all the machines have been updated/harmonized to 1 generation of Windows, and 2 Generations of Office (soon to be one).
I have edited the "Products and Classifications" and ran the "Server Cleanup Wizard every time an old generation/SP-Level was dropped. The Wizard each time deleted many files from the WSUSContent folder.
Now I am down to <700 approved updates, yet the WSUSContent folder and the database are still huge and slow. 11GiB+ and 5GiB+.
Can I, without having to reinstall WSUS and the updates for it, "clear" the database, delete all WSUSContent/*, and start fresh with 0 Approvals/PCs?
Most of the updates in the database have been rolled into updated installation files anyway, so I hope to end up with a much leaner/faster database without old logs about ancient updates.
I know about wsusutil reset, but this only "reset"s the WSUSContent, not the Database?
So, I think, my core question is: "How do get an untouched WSUS-DB for an existing installation"?
Best Answer
No, there is no supported way of resetting to an "untouched" or clean WSUS database.
I see two options:
Don't do anything beyond practices recommended by Microsoft. Which are everything the WSUS GUI offers and reindexing the database. Stop worrying about those extra couple of gigabytes you may free up. If five gigabytes is a problem, you should already have invested in more space in general. Running any server at it's capacity is a bad idea. Which places the "problem" at a entirely different place.
With everything else you are jeopardizing the service's integrity and unnecessarily complicating the "problem". When getting to that point you have to consider option two anyway.
If the only purpose of your WSUS installation is to is to save bandwidth, and you don't have a complicated set of rules for your update releases and distribution, reinstall WSUS.
While reinstalling WSUS on a Small Business Server is not supported, doing so with a dedicated WSUS instance is extremely easy.
Uninstall WSUS and WID roles and features, remove the WID database files and reinstall the whole thing. That will take about 2 hours of your time and a complete resync (bandwidth) and you are good to go.
I recommend following the guidelines at the article Best Practices with Windows Server Update Services 3.0. Especially the point: "Make sure that your WSUS server is configured to download only approved updates"